Dead and Alive
by twentyfiveraven
Summary: The trials and tribulations of those who live and die and live again. My collection of DOGS ficlets/drabbles, as they come to me. Mostly off-canon, so no spoilers.
1. The Peacemakers

**Title:** The Peacemakers

**Rating:** PG-13, T

**Characters/Pairing:** Haine, Badou, Nill, mention of Bishop.

**Warnings:** Mentions of violence, language. My craptastic writing.

**Word Count:** 1,596

**A/N:** Might be some BadouxHaine undertones, if you squint really, _really_ hard.

**Disclaimer:** DOGS and all it's characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirou

The Peacemakers

_"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."_

Matthew 9:5

Haine watches Badou's smoke snake up into the rafters, trailing venomous tails between the will o' the wisps suspended in the bars of sunlight striping the church's vaulted ribcage. Chiaroscuro is too pretty and poetic a word to use, out of place in this world rife and thriving with heavy howls and ragged fangs.

Haine asks him not to do that.

Badou yawns, stretches, pulling his lips back around his teeth, his limbs all wrong angles against the solid wood. It's unnecessary and obscene, just like everything else about Badou.

Badou asks him what, what is it he shouldn't do.

Haine doesn't answer him right away. He follows Badou's smoke, airily drifting into ceiling shadows and getting caught inside the cobwebs. It's distant and otherworldly, just like everything else about Haine.

Badou chuffs, doesn't deign to repeat himself. He shifts his long spider limbs inside the pew, too many crowded bones and the un-luxury of healed fractures. He makes two points of his knees and plants his boots, bowing his back toward the flagstones. His hair falls into orange loops, but mostly it just falls.

Haine means the cigarette, because the ashes and the chemical stink annoy him. He holds the reply on the point of his tongue for a second, then gives up, lets it eke it out between his teeth. He does that more often now, ever since him and Badou got to the Audi family headquarters too late and found those young girls stacked up waist high in the cellar. They all had unseeing eyes, Bishop told them, and unspeaking tongues, in exchange for the cat ears and tails all the men loved to pull and wrap their hungry hands around.

(Haine had found Nill that night and held her hands so hard he nearly broke them.)

Badou tries and fails to smoke his cigarettes upside-down, excessively hacking and coughing, spluttering on the stray strands of hair that find their way into his mouth.

Haine grins in spite of himself. He is the only one who ever does; Badou is too ridiculous for everyone else. Naoto can't bring herself to take him seriously. Everyone at Buon Viaggio writes him off as an idiot, with a dash of bastard. Nill is alright around him, but she's alright around anyone, once she gets to know them. Bishop…is Bishop, and no one knows what he _really_ thinks, in the depths of his too clever brain behind the black lenses. No one wants to.

It's all true, of course—Badou is a ridiculous, idiotic bastard, loudmouthed, lily-livered, a tactless addict with a penchant for getting himself into situations no one should survive.

Haine doesn't know—maybe he just knows Badou better, has seen him after the swinging automatics and euphoric bloodlust, has dragged him back to Bishop's when he takes too many bullets or has too much to drink, has watched him reach long fingers underneath his eyepatch and move them back and forth when he thinks no one sees.

Maybe it's because Badou knows him better than anyone else, too. Badou's seen him cough up bullets. Badou's heard him swear in guttural German whenever he gets especially pissed off. Badou knows the wide, feral spaces that dilate his pupils when the black dog pokes its bloody, grinning muzzle through his psyche.

Or it could be they're just used to each other. Which sounds like the same thing, but it's not—the same language spoken in a different dialect loses everything in translation.

Badou makes a sound of mild interest, because it's impossible for him to be completely quiet. Even when he shuts up he makes noise; Haine doesn't want to know how.

Nill flickers into his field of view, pure and tragic in ways as soft as her feathers, the wings of her twin black bows trembling like butterflies perched in her hair. She flutters, incandescent as a candle flame, down the opposite aisle, and it's only the sound of her footfalls that confirm her ties with gravity.

Haine leans into his forearms, crossed and grasping the back of the pew in front of him, watching her. Badou, still upside-down, makes small smoky mutters to himself.

She thumps softly up the steps to the altar, making a beeline for the pulpit. She must be fetching the Bible; Bishop keeps his emergency cash in the hollow where the New Testament used to be. After all, he's not really a bishop.

Nill spares them a quick smile, clutching the book to her chest, hurrying back the way she came. She's in a good mood, though, she always is on laundry days when she isn't laced up into some elaborate ruffled contraption. She dances two steps, trapped in the broken light sifting through the stained glass, a gentle swirl of innocence and watercolor, a few harmless feathers falling from her shoulder blades.

Haine smiles his Nill-smile, watches her back as she flits through the exit.

Badou sits up with a gasp, a groan, a thud of his sharp elbows propping him up, looking at Haine dryly with his one eye.

Nill's eyes are green, too, but they're a different shade, and that makes all the difference: Badou's emerald spade digs, digs, and Nill's jade flowers shed their petals one by one.

Badou adjusts his position so they're both to face to face; he does it to get rid of his own blind spots. Haine used to think the redhead just had personal space issues, but he's since learned better.

Badou blunt axes the side of Haine's neck, saying he knows why Haine likes Nill so much.

Haine's red irises wheel upward, knowing this conversation will most likely end with him failing to restrain his urge to strangle the other, leaving Badou with bruises on his neck and ego for a week. He readies himself accordingly, pinning his hands beneath his elbows, and waits for Badou to elaborate—he never needs a cue.

Badou tells him it's because he thinks that Nill is everything that's good in this fucked up world.

One of the wires in Haine's spine hemorrhages, tearing loose into his bloodstream—either that or Badou has actually caught him unawares.

The redhead continues, less than oblivious and more just choosing to keep talking.

She's just like a fucking angel. Unmarred and unscarred, silent as a white marble grave. Never bathed in blood and tissue dismembered, never held pulsating organs in her hands. Always sweet, never sour.

Badou's jaw juts out, twisting his smirk around his cigarette.

And it might have something to do with that Lilly whoever, given how much Haine talks about her in his sleep—

Haine sees it—furry black paws shoving Badou back down to the stones, explosions of red and orange, tongue lolling, gunning for Badou's throat, _bang_—

He collars himself halfway. Puts Badou back down. Leashes his fury until the night time, when the black dog runs wild through his dreamscapes, severing Nill's wings, eating Naoto's hair, putting bullets between Bishop's sightless eyes, drinking Badou's blood straight from his mouth, the empty hole of his right eye—

Badou looks slightly shocked he's not being throttled at the moment, brushes himself off, murmuring absently in disappointment. Because he's Badou, just as sick and twisted as the rest of them, gets high off of gun residue and tries to get his partner to kill him, when he's not saving his ass.

And Haine—

Haine—

Haine points out a bloodstain on Badou's shirt, flicks the tapered point of his nose when he looks down.

Badou squawks, over the top and long hair, cursing too much and too loudly to be acceptable anywhere, much less a church, a noisy bellows, skinny and orange like a stick of TNT with a perpetually short fuse (Haine always lights the matches, Badou burns himself so often).

Haine laughs bad-naturedly, a few staccato Anglican barks, different from Badou's manic mad hatter giggles but kind of similar, the same song sung in a different key.

Badou's worth that, at least.

Whatever their relationship is—friendship or enmity, amity, amnesty, symbiosis, predator-prey, dynamo and dynamite, lone wolves, stray dogs, white hair and eyepatch—Haine doesn't plan on figuring it out. It would be impossible. Nothing is ever easy with Badou.

The redhead stalks off with an inexplicable gimp, clutching his nose and calling Haine a royal bastard, whimpering to himself about his precious ruined face.

The funny thing is, Badou would probably say the same thing about him.

Haine calls after his retreating back, saying it was already ruined to begin with, fucking pirate ass wannabe.


	2. The Sword

**Title:** The Sword

**Characters, Pairings:** Naoto, Fuyumine-san

**Rating:** PG-13, T

**Warnings:** Vague violence. Weirdness.

**Word Count:** 344

**A/N:** Rambling. Makes no sense.

**Disclaimer:** DOGS and all its characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirou

The Sword

_"Deliver my life from the sword, my very life from the power of the dog."_ —Psalm 22:20

It is her lover.

She would be water and wood, without it, dripping faucets and kitchen matches. She would be street-bred bruises, a field of burned flowers, the sound of fingernails on concrete.

Her love saved her from such a cruel fate.

Her lover is more than spark, it is shine, more than a trigger and a fuse. It is animal bite. It is cut velvet. It is truth.

Her lover has no name.

It has made her ice and fire, hourglass beast. She is ice, cold white skin, stones for eyes and blue fire knitting fingers to knuckles, knuckles to wrist, wrist to forearm. She is fanged. She is moonlight. She is truth.

It is a dark wish, some seven headed thing, a spindle and a clock. Could she really live and love, here? Live and love the way people did before the underground, and the end of the world?

No.

Never.

This love is to kiss steel, to lay like a martyr in a pool of blood, to spawn nothing but hatred and cruelty and nightmares.

She is the skull of a black cat, grinning inside the walls, within.

This is the kind of love she deserves.

Would she whittle his flesh away, now, touch blade to shoulder blade, carve the blasphemous X brand across his chest—no. Taking his coat to be bed sheet for her and her lover, his name for her own. No. But that is not penance. She does not regret her years of hatred on his behalf. Only resents the years wasted pursuing the wrong one, when she could have been seeking the eyes she once knew, the ones she saw again, the staring, the unblinking, in the faceless void of dreams.

Her lover is revenge. Disembodied, the warmth of blood, the concave engravings of the katana's hilt, the feel of bodies torn around her tongue. Cold, beautiful, truthful revenge.

So this is love.


	3. Sopravivve

**Title:** Sopravvive

**Rating:** PG-13, T

**Characters/Pairings**: Haine, Bishop, Badou, Naoto, mentions of Nill and Einstellsehn.

**Warnings**: Violence and language.

**Word Count**: 993

**A/N**: I owe James Joyce and Pixar.

**Disclaimer:** DOGS and all it's characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirou

Sopravivve

It is a complicated thing, survival in this underground, the dystopian realm of mirror ground and silver nitrate sky, unnatural culmination filling his lungs with every inhale. Inversion, that is the driving force behind this netherworld, this backwards paradise somewhere between Eden and hell. Men becoming animals. Dogs eating dogs.

(Haine learned from the best though—the blind man grins in four different shades of cunning, his tone derisive because survival is an art form, Haine. Art meaning nothing to a man who lives in an eternal void, survival wearing his fingernails down to the nail beds, because without sight he has no other options, has to make sure to avoid the laughing black queen, blood-splattered, checkmates before anyone jumps him and then retreats. Bishop was always a match for any king.)

But Haine does survive.

In fact, he excels.

All the metal fused in intricate coils from his lumbar to his skull catches the credit in its hollows, but Haine's tongue snarls—he won't owe _it_ anything. Falsehood rings like bullets on concrete; Haine would rather acknowledge his true muscles, roped into tight cordons beneath his flesh, all his nerves kissing reflexes, the quickness of his eyes and wits and instincts.

That, and Haine's not stupid—he can purge himself of bullets but it's not like he goes out _looking_ for them (it really does _hurt_).

He's only got the one scar, after all—the un-flesh a frozen river carved between his shoulder blades, the chipped piano keys of his vertebrae a bloodless alloy scowl, the bent bar of a cage.

(But what a fucking scar)

He could have left it all up to Chance and the Fates and that laughing woman's smiles engraved into his marrow with her scalpel, but he doesn't. He can smell abandonment, sees it in the empty pews, the congregation deafening in their absence. While he wears his skin it's worth it—he'll just poke in a few more holes.

Bishop's intensity more than makes up for his lack of sight, all that subtlety and the assured tap of his cane. He approves, calls him the star pupil. Haine can't trust the praise; Bishop veils everything in disorienting opacity, white pupils included. Honesty is a privilege the blind man can rarely afford, akin to strangers' pity or salvation. So he shrugs, thanks him. Says that staying alive is human nature.

No, Bishop corrects him. Surviving is human nature.

Well fuck all, Badou interrupts; I could've told you that.

If there's one person out there who is better than Haine at surviving, it's Badou. And if he knew that Haine was merely entertaining the thought he would agree, very loudly and very obnoxiously, a flightless bird with plumage vibrant to the point of indecency (all those birds that are extinct nowadays).

It's truth, though, nonfiction as scar tissue and bloodstains. Badou's tattooed with hard knocks, from behind his knees to his burned fingertips, all aged imperfections. Outsiders—meaning everyone else, both the living and the dead—point sure fingers at Lady Luck, who never comes when called, blaming her benevolent blessing for Badou's beating heart. Badou curses them with lighter fluid, breathes out smoke and labels their sin jealousy, sure and stupid.

Haine is quieter, the ink outlines before Badou sprays in the color, but his soul sneers at the flighty Lady's smile. Skill, as Badou would say arrogantly, is likewise faultless. Haine doubts it is conscious, like an artist born with the right to master pieces. Badou is not master of anything but himself.

That is the reason. He just is, like smoke from a gun or pain from an old wound. Natural reaction twisted into his DNA and the long strands of his hair. Born that way.

Bishop turns his cane backwards, kind of like a smile. Desperation, Haine. Rare, coming from you.

Haine scowls; he's always been out of place in the pews. Penitence is not a costume he wears well, and others' masks never seem to fit him. He's always been jealous of the blind man's shape, long and seamless like the high-collared gown, his ability to find his own hidden niche to outlast the fallout of this world, has always been jealous of his cowardice.

How is that despair?

Bishop never answers his questions on the same day, so Haine has to go looking for the answer.

He finds an empty casket with sleeping feathers inside, and watches Granny blow smoke rings into her own air with her pipe, and listens to the skate of metal on skin from razorblades and katanas.

Because his will is his own, and mine is not. He is ruled by the laws that govern everything, elliptical and endless, mineral and word. They've crashed together, here, yes, but it's a pile of wire hangers—pull on one and they all come out. A mutant is still a human, to some degree.

Are they now? When he stands underneath the stained glass window ink turns into watercolor. Art. What is human nature?

The will to live.

Wrong again, student.

And Haine listens to Naoto build cities of men and women with her voice, silver lands rivered with blood as rich as oil, as she turns everything to ice and stone for a man with a small back and a last name.

And he watches as Badou burns his memories into sweet ash and sweeter smoke, tastes the pain and the nostalgia, like masochism cloaked in self preservation, sews his bloodline and his anger into rows of crooked stitches.

And he pulls a curl of Nil's yellow hair taut between his fingers, and then he lets it go.

"I don't want to survive," he tells the blind man. "I want to live."

And Bishop looks at him with his eyes that don't see, and he calls him his star pupil.


	4. Growing Up Too Fast

**Title:** Growing Up Too Fast

**Rating:** K+, PG

**Characters:** Nill, Bishop

**Warnings**: Implied Nill/Bishop, which means weirdness.

**Word Coun**t: 57

**Disclaimer: **DOGS and all it's characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirou

Growing Up Too Fast

He likes to dress her up in black; her eyes are sweeter that way, somehow. His hands are pale and chaste and ironic—you'd think they'd be Humbert-hued and stealthy, but they are cautious citizens, careful of the collared laws around his throat, careful not to linger.

Not even when she wants them to.


	5. Winds Sighing From a Punctured Lung

**Title: **Winds Sighing From a Punctured Lung

**Rating:** K+, PG

**Characters:** Nill, Bishop

**Warnings**: None, I think. Maybe if you squint, some implied Bishop/Nill

**Word Coun**t: 234

**Disclaimer: **DOGS and all it's characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirou

Winds Sighing From a Punctured Lung

They make a fine pair, the man who can't see and the girl who can't speak. It's the old role, the costume is worn through at the elbows—generous man and lost girl. Nil wishes it wouldn't itch so, but lace never hurt anybody.

He reads to her from old books, the spines worn through, the pages crumbling beneath his fingertips. Meticulous fingertips, clean, feeling the words as he goes. To her they sound like bedtime stories—magic, retribution, heroes, revenge. He says they might as well be, for all anyone believes in them anymore. The church, after all, is always empty.

She wonders what a miracle is. She would ask, if she could.

She will take care of him when he's old, when he's wounded. For better or for worse, through sickness and in health—Bishop laughs queerly, lets his cane slips out of his grip and tap against the floor. The shocks jar his wrists.

He watches her, the blind man. He watches her, sitting on the back pew. She wonders what a prayer is. She holds her arms out for balance, standing on the pews, her wings fluttering erratically.

He doesn't kiss her scratched knees when she falls. He just crosses her—Father, Son, Holy Ghost—and leaves.

She wonders what a sin is.

The man who can't see and the girl who can't speak. They make quite a pair.


	6. Kiss the Blade of Benediction

**Title: **Kiss the Blade of Benediction

**Rating:** K+, PG

**Characters:** Nill, Haine

**Warnings**: Mentions of violence. [But really though, it's DOGS] Some Nill/Haine if you squint?

**Word Coun**t: 408

**Disclaimer: **DOGS and all it's characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirou

Kiss the Blade of Benediction

Nil rustles her fingers in Haine's hair, careful as an oracle sifting through a pile of bones. His head is heavy against her chest, but she doesn't complain. This is a right, a privilege, an augury of angels (and that's what she is, what they all call her and know her as, their little angel) and it will never be a burden, no matter how heavy it gets.

_It hurts._

Her little fingers flutter tenderly underneath the corner of his jaw, the bone sharp, the flesh there always cold.

It doesn't matter that she knows, just that he knows she knows.

She presses her warm cheek to his forehead, brushing soothing strokes with her delicate knuckles on the side of his neck.

Today was a bad day. Nil can tell from the way Haine shudders _toward_ her gentle touch, fractionally, and then goes still. But she has to be unconcerned. That part is important. She is endless acceptance, and he is endless hatred, and when he breaks she is always there, always welcomes him with open arms. Acceptance is unconditional. Acceptance is always silent.

She leans forward, pressing her mouth chastely against the top of his head, her glossy black fingernails combing sweetly, light as pixie dust, through the fine hair cropped behind his ear. It's more than a sister should do, less than a lover would. But then again, she is an angel, benevolent, acceptance, and angels can do no wrong.

His arms are limp, long and dangling from his shoulders like broken wings. Nil bites her lip, afraid of what that means, if they were shattered, or rent from his sockets, or cleaved from his skeleton and new ones grew back the wrong way.

Her breath catches on itself. He doesn't notice.

She wants to rock him, here, in the pew and the sunlight, her hair falling around him, a gold gossamer veil to protect him from the world, from himself. But she doesn't think she is strong enough to sway him. The most she can do is hold him, hold him fast with all the strength in her soul, and make sure he never falls.

He inhales, exhales, his breath a ragged, weary spirit across her collarbones, pulling at what lies beneath with hands jaded, gunmetal callused, constant. Nil doesn't shy away.

He is her big brother, and he will never be a burden, no matter how heavy he gets.


	7. The Follow Game of Fallow Men

**Title:** The Follow Game of Fallow Men/Skip

**Rating: **T

**Characters/Pairing: **Haine

**Warnings: **Weirdest thing I've ever written in my life. And THAT is saying something.

**Word Count: **271

**Disclaimer: **DOGS and all its characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirow.

* * *

The Follow Game of Fallow Men

Haine has both feet in the grave already; he's just waiting for the rest of him

_He can have her sundial smooth and gasping whenever he wants whenever he wants _

Hardest part is the deepest part is the hardest part is the deepest part is the

_Together we can make beautiful things happen together Haine we can make beautiful_

Haine doesn't sleep at night, even though he knows that staying up makes him

_Crazy is as crazy does big brother, crazy is as crazy does big brother, crazy is as_

What have they done what have they done what has he done what is he doing

_Flesh is cold and blood is warm and hot and good and breath is short and bad dogs will _

Dying is the best thing he knows how to do besides killing people, but that's just

_A different sort of death and now ladies and gentlemen I present to you my son_

Light is his enemy, women are his enemy, friends are his enemy, the future is his

_Haine, isn't he beautiful ladies and gentlemen, we made him out of all the good dead_

Dogs are howling in the night stray dogs are howling in the night mother can I please

_Join them I just want to join them I just want to belong somewhere I just want to be_

Anywhere.

_It just can't be here it just can't be here it just can't be here I just can't be here_

Haine has both feet in the grave already and now it's just a matter of time until


	8. Nothing Less Than Shangri la

**Title: **Nothing Less Than Shangri-la

**Characters/Pairing: **A little bit of one-sided NillxEveryone, I guess.

**Rating: **K+

**Word Count: **579

**Warnings: **Some Nill-trauma, you know, courtesy of the fact she used to be a prostitute.

**Disclaimer: **DOGS and all its characters are the spawn of Miwa Shirow

**A/N: **You _can _comment, you know. I'd actually really like that. This is my favorite thing I've written for this collection of Dogs ficlet, um, things. xD

* * *

Nothing Less Than Shangri-la

She dreams of uncertainty. Her skinned knees are raw, brindled with burgundy pain, scabbed from child antics on the church floor. In her dreams she never knows whether to keep them huddled and close, or spread for his hands, warm and rough.

In her dreams she never sees his face.

She knows the touch. There was a reason she ran away from Melvin, his hands weighty with power and lead and gold. She thought she'd die that day, that night, that timeless nothing-place with its towers and bridges and train tracks arching overhead, unseen but always there, like when the pushing men wanted her blindfolded. Her wings flutter—beautiful, useless things, like her face.

She had no power there. She wasn't like the cold ones, the beautiful girls with lovely hair and skin thick with chemicals, girls who bared their teeth and laughed in night whispers about umpteenth Mr. Big-shot who picked his nose when he thought they weren't looking. They were skeleton-women, who smoked and bathed in ice-water, murmured how they loved each other, themselves, women who came when called and ignored the blood, or enjoyed it.

She could never be like them. She shuddered, she whimpered, the child and orphan of the world. She was filled with too much goodness, she was what was left of heaven, or the heavenly past. Brothels were the wombs of saints and martyrs, but they were no place for angels.

She is no angel, not really, even though the bishop's side dash of teeth slides, opens, closes and turns away. It's what they call her, in secret, everyone, the star-child with her silver jug and fluttering, fluttering wings. She can look at them with doll eyes of purest, wisest green and they will always see her wings before her smile.

Even Naoto, beautiful Naoto with death whistling and sparkling between her hands, even Naoto never sees. Sexless Naoto, like a lone-she wolf or a lioness on her own. They can play all the games she likes to play with lace and skin and eyelashes in the sun but she will always only be Naoto's cub.

She can't speak, so she can't confess her sin, though the Bishop would no doubt find it amusing to give communion to a congregation of only one. So she pours her prayers out through her fingertips, polishing the communion rail until it gleams, until she can see her beautiful face distorted, reflected in the shine.

She can't speak, so no one ever hears her. Her brother, he moans and writhes and shudders against her, sobbing and pleading with the voices in his head and the back of his neck. She strokes the bandages, the sharp outline of his shoulder blades beneath his jacket, the frayed edges of a bullet hole, the cold circle of skin.

She's older, so much older now, but he still looks the same.

And she wants to say, _It's alright_.

And she wants to say _I'm here_.

And she wants to say _I can make you forget_…

She can't speak, so she can't promise the paradise of angels, the bliss of curving flesh. She can't lock up her heart with finger-crossed promises of chastity much longer, not when voluptuous heat beckons her forward with music box hands, not when she dreams of all the young singing boys and girls.

The shadow realms of beauty lay claim to her sweetness, and she flies and falls forever into the black.


	9. Reminders of Being Human

Reminders of Being Human

The ending of Requiem for a Dream. Because even though Haine's never had a mother, or a lover, he still knows the complete and utter agony of having a dream that will never come true.

The pictures Nill draws for him. Her visions were surprisingly dark (or perhaps not so surprisingly), filled with strange barbed arabesques and winged things without mouths. He liked them, and tacked them to the bare walls of his apartment. They added some color to the place, and suited his moods.

Midnight above ground. Haine wouldn't know a poet if he shot him in the face, but moonlight's claw has always stirred something in him. He can't even see the buildings, it's so dark, just him and the shadows, the beady little eyes of faraway stars.

Graveyards. They're quiet, and kinda pretty sometimes, in a morbid way.

Scaring the pants off Badou. They'll be walking right, and Haine will fall a step or two behind (and Badou won't notice, of course, because he's Badou),then he approaches him from his blind side, and when he's as close he dares Haine just starts _barking_ like mad and Badou will jump a foot in the air and start swearing at the top of his voice for at least three blocks.

When strangers mistake Naoto for a man. Increasingly nearsighted strangers that aren't all there, but it's still hilarious. And the ensuing carnage is always fun, too.

They are few and far between, the things that keep him human. There are not many of them, and they are not pleasant, or beautiful, but loveliness is gone from this place along with whatever's left of Haine's soul, along with everything that could have been. So he grapples with despair as best he can, and at the very least he gets whatever he's given.

They are few and far between, the things that keep him human, but they are there, and to Haine that's all that matters.


	10. The Aesthetics of Malice and Songbirds

The Aesthetics of Malice and Songbirds

Naoto gets used to the halogen lights within a week. She gets used to the absence of everything: amusement, and affection, and feeling. Feeling anything.

She doesn't have to get used to the knife. It grows out of her wrist and becomes her hand. It's always been there, invisible, nothing but presence. There was never a time when she wasn't holding onto something.

Her parents' hands.

The knife.

The sword.

Naoto doesn't remember how old she was. Just that she was young, and he was older, like always.

"Do you know what they used to do to birds in cages?"

Magato is watching her, again, his eyes and mouth too sharp and too curved. Naoto looks at him, looks away, tightens her grip on the knife.

"They used to blind them."

She lets it fly, ignoring him. She doesn't hit the target hard enough; the blade bounces harmlessly off the wood, clanging to the floor.

"They used to blind them, because birds only sing at night." Magato's voice stretches itself thin; he's smiling. "So they gave them night eternal."

"That's horrible," Naoto mutters, scooping up her blade. She's barefoot; her footfalls never make a sound. It's so quiet she can hear the knife singing, in a voice as subtle as death. It's so quiet she can hear Magato's teeth.

"That's life, my bird," he murmurs, and his laughter echoes against the cracked walls of her home, of her brain, as he leaves her alone in the darkness under the halogen lights.


	11. Violins

Violins

…And she sips, cold lips on wineglass not naive enough to tremble, her eyes hooded like the steel-toed beast on falconer hands—alert, tenuous, honed. She doesn't drink. The fishhooks in her mind cease their pull, pulling; it's just a matter of personal preference. Alcohol makes her feel like her sword is melting, all the silver dripping into a pool over glass, hardening into a mirror like the broken one inside her chest.

Badou comes in then, like a crooked wind, whistling through his chapped smoker's lips, rustling the papery edges of everyone at the bar. He's shadow laughing again. His fingers grope and slide, pale and pulling like worse than a blind man, hoping to suck in sense and substance through his fingertips.

Naoto watches him approach, her face the unmoving stone. His eye is like a sieve. Despair and anger spill out of the green, spill out onto the bar, cracking his smile like the edges of quicksilver (poison, dripping, gravity, beautiful).

He takes a breath. Naoto waits. She wonders why she isn't surprised by any of this. It can't be she's gotten used to Badou already.

Badou lets his breath out. Naoto can hear the emphysema, it rattles like a train. "Nice outfit."

She makes a slight 'tsk' noise. The jacket is sleek and the skirt is short and she feels entirely too exposed. She hates the feeling of cool air, of men's eyes. Severity suits her, matches her eyes, her nature, not this, not the vulnerable sensuousness of long, bare legs.

"Nice suit," Naoto replies evenly, sarcastically. Naoto notices the details before anything else—there's holes worn through at the shoulder seams, and the fabric grays and coarsens from wear around the elbows. And then the smell of cordite, and small spots of blood like constellations dotting his jacket.

Badou laughs a low, drunken laugh, reaping the rewards of his killing fight. He'll be high for hours now, like a dog in heat, scratching at his own belly, chewing on his old scars. Haine is better looking at after him when he's like this. Naoto frowns.

"I went to a concert." And then he laughs, again. "I met the guy who took my eye."

Badou lies, everyone knows he lies just by looking at him, his languid, troublemaker pose, his fingertips stained yellow from nicotine, but he wouldn't lie about this. She stares at him, silent.

"He _apologized_."

Naoto narrows her eyes. With her, it wouldn't make a difference; she'd have killed him nonetheless. Not like her self-styled big brother would ever apologize. At least, not until she _made_ him.

"What did you do?"

He looks at her, something unhinged behind his eye, something sad about his smile.

"I did what I had to do."

Naoto gives him the wineglass wordlessly, and she looks at him and finds it hard to look away. He is her greatest fear, at present—the aftermath of life, what happens after revenge, because Naoto has always nursed the nightmare that maybe Magato was right, that she'll have nothing left to live for.

He drinks too deeply, coughs and Naoto can see his tongue flash, backward and forward and his hand awkward around the glass.

"Did you know that they put chalk on their strings? Violin players, cello players and things."

She did know that. She doesn't know how, but she did. Her father told her once, or maybe she learned it from her real father, or her real mother, those unreal shadow people that are her life and heart.

"I never knew that. But it seemed like it was everywhere, white chalk dust."

This breakdown is not meant for her. Only, maybe it is. Naoto remembers herself, crouched to the floor, too scared to pick up the sword, alone with the shadows of his body, with his ghost. Naoto remembers thinking; _this is the first time I've ever cried_…

Badou cringes, without warning, like some far gone thing, like Nil or Haine. Hate is slowly burgeoning within him, she can tell, a slow, crawling self-loathing that turns the world dull and red and lifeless. It's why he didn't go to Haine, Naoto realizes. He doesn't want to be undead and futureless. He came to her.

He says, dramatically, with his eye drifting and pulling away, "I have heard the music of revenge."

_Give me a reason to live. _

…They are leaving, passing and moving through each other like spirits full of skin. She's gone blind, or paralyzed, the shut-in self that keeps her safe unlocked with his hands that are scarred and not scarred. She can't see him, but she can hear him, and a distant, discordant song coming from the walls, full of staccato breathing and arpeggios of voice and flesh. The whole thing seems slightly off-key, but every so often, there's a noise like a thousand butterflies, amid velvety-cried arias like moonlight.

"What is that?" she asks him, and he answers, "Violins."

…Later she is clutching her sheets around her like cerements of the grave. Later she is wondering what just happened, what the hell they've done. And she is saying,

"The music of revenge…what was it like?"

The symphonies of together have quieted, and Badou could be dead. He sits there crushed against the pillows with his hair gel flaking off and smoke curling from his mouth. For a while there is nothing but silence, and then a hollow tinnitus, like the songs of a thousand silver swords.

And Badou looks at her and wants to say, it sounds like a heartbeat. Like gunfire. Like a small child, screaming. Like the curtain when it finally falls.

Instead, Badou looks at her, Naoto in his bed like danger and power and beauty, like everything else he's always wanted. Instead, he breathes out his smoke while he smiles, and he tells her, "It sounds just perfect."


End file.
